An ancient inner science for health & well being

‘Act & The Actor’

I am sure each one of you must have had an opportunity to go to a cinema hall and watch a movie or If not a cinema hall, you must have definitely watched it on a television prime time or matinee show. In a typical cinema story, you will find the lead actor, a lead actress and a villain without whom the movie cannot be made. Apart from these, you will find few more characters like parents of the protagonist, Uncle, Ants, Nephew, Niece etc. This kind of summarizes at least a typical Bollywood Hindi Movie in India. And one thing which is worth mentioning is the ‘Songs’ and the background score which are played at appropriate intervals to keep the audience engaged.

Now if you carefully observe your own life, you will see that there is a lot of similarity between the movie & your own life story in terms of characters, life situations, highs and lows, friends and foes etc. The one and the only difference between the movie which you watch on a cinema theatre and the real life is that in your real life you are not a mere spectator, rather you are the actor, director and the producer of your own movie which we are calling as life. You are the lead actor in your drama and everything has been bestowed upon you. When I say bestowed, I am saying that it’s totally in your hands whether you want to create a good drama or a horrible drama.

If you go to a movie theatre and watch a movie which didn’t taste good to you, then you have the liberty to say that the director or the story writer couldn’t deliver what they were supposed to. But in your own life drama, whom will you blame? Unfortunately, this is what is happening in the entire world. You create a bad drama in your life and then you start blaming the others which is the sign of madness because you fail to understand that in your life you are the story writer, you are the director and you are the actor. If you start blaming someone else for your life’s bad drama, then you are qualified to be called as insane.

If you simply realize that whatever is happening in your life, somewhere you are responsible for this, then suddenly you will wake up from the dream and will start working towards your wellbeing. But if you keep blaming someone else, then it’s going to be an endless game without rules. Now let me put it in the right context so that people who are reading this article can understand it in an appropriate way. When I am saying you are responsible for your own drama, I am talking in terms of your experience & not in terms of physical actions. Which means whether you make a misery out of a situation or you become wise out of that situation, it is totally in your hands.

Once it happened, Gautama, the Buddha was going to a village to give a sermon to his disciples. On the way, Gautama met few people who used to hate him and when they saw Gautama coming, they all started abusing him in one tone. They kept doing it for few minutes and Gautama was just standing there listening to them quietly. Those men were surprised that they were abusing Gautama in the filthiest possible language and there he was standing still uttering not even a single word. When they got tired of abusing him, Gautama said to them, “Please forgive me, I am in a hurry. People in a nearby village are waiting for me and if you are done with your thing then I may leave now”.

Those people were flabbergasted by this whole thing. They couldn’t believe that there can be a man like him who can withstand all this trash which they were saying to him without any sign of agitation or anger. It melted their heart and they fell on Gautama’s feet requesting him to forgive them. So the moral of the story is, it doesn’t matter what kind of situation you get stuck, what matters is the way you respond to that situation. The decision is always in your hands whether to react or respond.

If you follow the ways of the plant, you can make your life wonderful. When I say ways of the plant, I am sure you must have planted saplings in your garden. You put filth on the root of the plant and in a couple of weeks’ time, the plant throws out beautiful fragrant flowers. The filth is becoming a flower. If you as a human being can follow the ways of a plant, then you will know how to convert filth into a flower just like Buddha did in the above story. So it’s time that we take charge of our own life’s experiences. It’s time to take responsibility for our life situations so that we can live a happy blissful life……!